If you thought that Google Places’ move to Google+ Local was the last major local SEO change you’d have to deal with for a while, think again. We of course already discussed a suite of local business tools known as Google Business Builder that is set to launch some time in July, which at least gave […]

As you undoubtedly know by now, Google replaced Places with Google+ Local as their local business directory a few weeks ago, but not much changed for business owners. Sure, they overhauled the review system and transformed how local pages look to the front-end user, but management processes and the back-end dashboard for the business owners […]

In our recent post “What is Google Places”, we offered a crash course in claiming and optimizing your business’s listing for local search on Google. To help you avoid initiating the creation or claiming of a listing without being fully prepared, we included as many screen shots as possible in an effort to show you all of the available fields you’d be able to fill out when you begin editing your Google Places listing.

If you have any experience with Google Places, then you know you’re limited to only 10 business photos for your listing. But Google is currently running a pilot program that will allow 360° walk-throughs inside your business!

After writing yesterday’s post about the recent policy change at Google Places, it occurred to me that many of you may not even know what Google Places actually is. I’d like this post to serve as your introduction in to the world of Google Places and local search optimization.

In the internet age Google Places is arguably one of the most important free tools that all small businesses must take advantage of. But you wouldn’t know it to read Google’s own description:

So you’ve finally started to build an online presence for your business or organization. You’ve probably got a new website, a blog, Facebook and Twitter pages, and you may have even taken the next step and created your Google Places listing. But did you know that you may now be in violation of a major Google Places policy? Whether you’ve already claimed your listing or not, you need to know about this change to prevent your listing from being removed. Over the last several days, the SEO blogosphere has been buzzing about the following, unannounced addition to the Google Places Quality Guidelines.